Subject: Re: Commercial Licensing
From: [email-masked] ("Robert W. Fuller")

1 Apr 1997 08:54:59 -0800
Approved: [email-masked]
Distribution: cygnus
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Jim Balter wrote:
> 
> Reed Kotler Consulting wrote:
> 
> > I suppose thought that you could relink cygwin.dll adding those other
> > components and then you wouldnt be violating any rules.
> 
> libccrt0 has to live in the .exe, not the dll.  If Cygnus had published
> an interface specification for cygwin.dll then of course you could
> just say that you were following the spec if you provided your own
> version, but they haven't.  As I said, I don't know how copyright
> law applies to reverse engineering.

How copyright laws apply to reverse engineering is irrelevant if you
know how copyright laws apply to programming interfaces.  In fact, US
courts have set the precedent that copyright law does not apply to
programming interfaces, although it does apply to implementations. 
Therefore, if it pleased me to do so, I could write and distribute my
own substitute for cygwin.dll.  Legally, my substitute could use the
same interface, as long as I didn't copy the implementation.
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